I'm modelling a precast, pre-stressed bridge which consists of symmetric internal Y beams and asymmetric edge beams. My edge beams experience a horizontal deflection (as well as the expected vertical deflection) due to the pre-stressing loads. This is due to the eccentricity of my tendon layout so the resolution would be to re-arrange my tendons to account for this. Has anyone else encountered this issue? Just wondering if there is a more time efficient solution than adjusting the layout, running the model, re-adjust the layout and so on. Would I be better doing a manual calc on the forces & eccentricities, balance them and then model the resulting layout?

If it were me I'd keep brute forcing it (adjust, model, re-adjust). It's less prone to errors, simpler to implement, and faster in the short run. If you're going to be designing these beam multiple times (like if you work for a precaster and they're going to be used for multiple jobs) that's when I'd look at creating something to solve for the appropriate strand layout.

Also, I assume that the precaster only has so many predefined strand locations in their stressing bed so the number of available combinations can't be that large.

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